The History of the Lord of the Rings

$1.86

2) The very happy winner of the ‘Children of Hurin’ book signed by Christopher Tolkien and Alan Lee goes to Patricia M. up in Northern California. Our thanks to everyone who participated in the lottery by pledging during J.R.R. Tolkien’s Birthday celebration this past weekend. Please look for a new Prize draw starting very soon.

Both film and book have brought so many joy. I believe we should celebrate the existence of both. Thank you, Peter Jackson, for creating the films, introducing so many to Tolkien’s world. And thank you, Christopher Tolkien, for making sure all of us still have plenty of reasons to go back to the books, where a deeper joy awaits.

No, Christopher Tolkien's reserve has a very different explanation: the enormous gap, almost an abyss, which has been created between his father's writings and their commercial descendants -- work he does not recognize, especially since New Zealand film-maker made , three phenomenally successful films, between 2001 and 2003. Over the years, a sort of parallel universe has formed around Tolkien's work, a world of sparkling images and of figurines, colored by the original books of the cult, but often very different from them, like a continent that has drifted far from its original land mass.

Before that, however, Christopher Tolkien agreed to speak with Le Monde about this legacy, a patrimony which has been his life's work, but which has also become the source of a certain "intellectual despair." For the posterity of J.R.R. Tolkien is both the story of an extraordinary literary transmission from a father to a son, and the story of a misunderstanding. The most well-known works, the ones that have obscured the rest, were only an epiphenomenon in the eyes of their author. They are a tiny corner of Tolkien's vast world, which he even abandoned, at least partly.

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Tolkien family

J. R. R. Tolkien

Edith Tolkien

Christopher Tolkien

Simon Tolkien

Tim Tolkien

Christopher Tolkien

Born

(1924-11-21) 21 November 1924 (age 91)Leeds, England

Occupation

Editor, novelist, academic

Alma mater

University of Oxford

Genre

Fantasy

Christopher Reuel Tolkien (born 21 November 1924) is the third and youngest son of the author J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973), and is best known as the editor of much of his father's posthumously published work. He drew the original maps for his father's The Lord of the Rings, which he signed C. J. R. T. The J. stands for John, a baptismal name that he does not ordinarily use.

. Christopher Tolkien. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. [25 Aug 88]

Christopher Tolkien is right on. Let me borrow from the comment below and say the movies "look fair but feel foul," or should we say "not all that glitters is gold."

. Christopher Tolkien. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989. [7 Sep 89]

Christopher Tolkien is the youngest son of J.R.R. Tolkien, and is the CEO of the Tolkien Estate, which governs Tolkien's properties and trademarks. In the interview, Christopher remarks as to how his father's stories shaped his childhood, saying:

. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 2014.

After his death, his son Christopher Tolkien organized, edited, and published several more books based pretty much entirely on the notes and drafts that his father left behind. These include:

In a lifetime of work Christopher Tolkien edited and brought many of these unfinished story elements to print in the form of , , , & and the rest of the 12-volume series known as .The answer to this question is a simple one. As it stands, the literary executor of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, his son, Christopher Tolkien, has refused to consider any further licensing of his father’s work for cinematic purposes.After his father's death, Christopher Tolkien embarked on organizing the masses of his father's notes, some of them written on odd scraps of paper a half-century earlier. Much of the material was handwritten; frequently a fair draft was written over a half-erased first draft, and names of characters routinely changed between the beginning and end of the same draft. Deciphering this was an arduous task, and perhaps only someone with personal experience of J.R.R. Tolkien and the evolution of his stories could have made any sense of it. Christopher Tolkien has admitted to having to occasionally guess at what his father intended.Christopher Tolkien, born on 21st November 1924, is the third son of J.R.R. Tolkien. Appointed by Tolkien to be his literary executor, he has devoted himself since his father's death in 1973 to the editing and publication of unpublished writings, notably The Silmarillion and the collections entitled Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth. Since 1975 he has lived in France with his wife Baillie.